Today is June 21st. I'll call it C-Day, not to be confused with D-Day from the MIB reference in my previous post. I want to say it is the beginning of the rest of my life, but then that would be me being dramatic and all although that's something I do ever so often and then I do think every new day is the beginning of ... you get my point, so let's just stick to C-Day.
I've always had a fascination with June 21, maybe if I was not born on the day I was born which I think is a great day to be born on, then I'd have wanted to be born on June 21, sound weird enough? :) As it is, we have two Gemini's in the family, another cusped Gemini would have been disastrous :P
Back to June 21, the birthday of Prince William (which girl my age hasn't had a crush on that cute boy fella at some point in their lives, tell me?), the feast of St. Aloysius College, the birthday of our current Bishop (Mangalore), summer solstice (appropriately we have a heat wave warning today) and I'm sure some more equally fascinating events, so I'll record mine too.
To satisfy my curiosity, I looked through my archives and found there's only one other blog entry dated June 21, that was in 2006, so much for the fascination. Going forward, I will *try* to post 'something' on every 6/21, I encounter!
A draft version of my message is ready and sealed in a ziploc bag, it will be cast into the deep ocean next month with little to no fan-fare, at most probably a picture to capture the event if possible.
Ever since I can remember, I've wanted to send out my own 'message in a bottle' hence forth referred to as MIB, I think the pleasure of sending out one is slightly elevated than receiving one and of course nothing can beat receiving a response to a MIB. I've had umpteen opportunities to do it but I reckon better late than never.
The feasibility and initially planning was nothing like I've ever done in any previous project, a 5 year old could do it! Once I knew that I would have access to a deep ocean, the wheels in my head started turning and I knew there could be no better time to create my own MIB. Next came the little tough part, the content of my message? Knowing me, I had to caution against the finder drumming a tl;dr, I knew I wanted to bring a smile to the person who discovers it, I can almost visualize a girl or a boy reading it, with a grin on their face and that is what I've set out to do in my draft. I still call it a draft version as I'll probably modify it another 7 times until D-Day. Then came the easy choice of using my email id as the preferred method of response, when they find it, if at all they wanted to tell me about it.
MIB should be sent in a fancy blue transparent bottle, no? Anyway, due to the logistics involved in procuring and transporting said blue bottle, I 'think' I'll have to stick with either a wine or beer bottle and then comes the real trick of how to seal the cap, haven't figured that out yet, but can't let the MIB wiggle its way out of the bottle, now can I?
Two weeks since that fateful air accident in Mangalore and the very last episode of Lost too and no, I'm not inclining towards any paranormal co-incidence between those two events. My involvement was naturally with Mangalore as a city for all the flying I've done through Bajpe airport and Lost, well ... you know fan-girl and all.
Every time in this past year, when I've mentioned to my fellow Indians that I was from Mangalore, they would jokingly ask me if I was one of the girls dragged out of the pub (thanks Muthalik and all those before him, you made Mangalore infamous) however these past few days, I seem to be have become the unwilling catalyst for aviation related conversations! If only IT professionals could design our runways ...
Back to 'Bad Robot' no more, every lostie would have their 'back-story', how and why they got hooked onto a show as complex as this.
My back-story is simple, the trailers for 'Lost' started airing in India sometime in 2005 and since it was going to be on Star Movies, we assumed it was a mini-series, rather than a show with many seasons, maybe a few hours long max and with an airplane and island storyline, it easily caught my attention. No matter what, come rain or come shine, power or no-power, the whole family would be gathered around the idiot box every saturday between 7 to 9 PM for the next 13-14 weeks. No other show, not since the days of Surabhi or the weekly Kannada/Hindi feature film on doordarshan (not that we had channel change option then) received the kind of dedication from all of us like this show did. Mother and Father were just as focussed as the rest of us.
Unfortunately the dedication was short-lived since one, realizing that it's not the end after 25 hrs of not batting our eyelashes is disappointing and two, the time in-between seasons is distracting and something that we're not used to. Anyway, that was around the time I first came to the US and well, guess what, they were already ahead of me by a few episodes, once I caught up there was no turning back. I had been christened into a lostie. The only thing I started missing was the conversations we had about the show, bouncing ideas with my folks, out of the original six of us, only my brother and me kept pace and after a while, he got bored too. Along the way, I've met a few co-workers (mostly non-Indians) who were very passionate about the show and I remember going out for coffee once just so that we could discuss Lost!
The finale was a commercial fest, a mammoth 2.5 hrs and that after a long day at the Soup Kitchen. There may be a few spoilers ahead.
What I've enjoyed most about the show was the persistent story telling, the flawed characters who were not judged for their past, everyone gets an equal opportunity to start afresh. It's like agreeing that redemption is for all if one desires it, the end to me almost seemed like a spiritual experience, heavy with emotions and fore-thought. I will agree that over the seasons, it did get slow and ever so confusing at times, but that was no reason to stop watching. There are whole episodes that made no sense at all when I watched on tv, but I would go back and watch again, online or go to the forums, the online fanaticism is quite amazing!
Sometimes being a person of faith and a person of science at the same time is not at all easy, I can relate so well to the conflict, yet it's not about gloating who trumped the other. I liked the explanation for the side-ways world (it was exactly how I'd thought it would play out, it was the way I perceived it although there are still many open questions). I believe it's all about finding the other person that we connected with even if we failed to figure that out here, our faith and trust in people will be rewarded, if not here on earth, then elsewhere? And if I can say 'I trust you', that's the greatest thing in the world for me.
So where does all this leave us, can we just drink of the fountain and protect the light and be whole again? It sounds very biblical and convoluted too at the same time, is there really a cork holding all the evil back in, what's the guarantee that we won't plunge into whatever it unleashes? The end itself was still only about letting go of the limbo we put ourselves in, no man is an island and it's really okay if I don't have all the answers. This has been a great ride, I'll watch the whole show again, maybe with someone who has never watched an episode.
My own side-ways and future story is in writing and everytime I ask 'WHY', I hope to see the light from the tunnel just like Locke did albiet metamorphically.
